Cloudy Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10)

There’s been a lot of press around the FREE Ubuntu 9.10 Linux distribution as a client operating system, and a wide set of comparisons made (typically by Mac or PC-using journalists) between Ubuntu and Windows 7, but 9.10 is also interesting from a broader virtualization and especially Cloud perspective. Ubuntu is managed by a UK company, Canonical, through a bona-fide foundation. Ubuntu will always be free, and is aligned with the Debian community.

The Red Hat/Microsoft Alliance

Microsoft and Red Hat Cross-Certify to try and get VmWare out of the Datacenter. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2, 5.3, 5.4 has passed certification tests when running on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.
Windows Server 2003/ Windows Server 2008 / Windows Server 2008 R2 are validated to run on RHEL 5.4, using the KVM-based hypervisor.

Making sense of the Virtualization Security Players (Updated)

The known virtualization security vendors Reflex Systems, Catbird Security, Altor Networks, HyTrust, Symantec, Trend Microsystems, Tripwire, and VMware all showed their wares at VMworld. Even Checkpoint was showing off their firewall integration within the virtualized environment. Are these really competing products or products that have unique uses within the virtual environment with just a bit of overlap?

XenDesktop 4 Too Expensive?

XenDesktop’s initial marketing placement caused confusion, the latest release gives a greater flexibility and introduces new innovation. The latest release better provides for a flexible VDI offering – allowing access to XenApp technologies in one per named user license. Yet, depending on your environment – this can be at a hefty cost, massively increasing the license cost in some environments.